Be Excellent To Each Other

Getting close to the end, Myp. Nearly there..

Hang on, what about The One Reborn?

Anyway, the only real impediment is the (one of the three possible) final bosses, and only that particular one. The other two are pretty easy. Unless you want to do the optional bits.

You must've misread.

I'll try to do as much optional stuff as I can as long as it's fun. I was losing a bit of steam with it yesterday but after beating Micolash today I feel renewed (in blood).

.... Should have quoted it.

Bastard.

Poor Micolash.

Still working through the Forbidden Woods. The possessed villagers are wonderfully creepy but the snake enemies can get fucked. Well, the small ones are actually quite fun because the massive amount of them plus grass and generally poor visibility makes for incredibly tense wandering through the criss-crossing forest paths. The large poison spitting ones can totally get fucked though, they're so annoying to draw out and it just takes ages to clear them out. On my last jaunt through I fell off a cliff bit and found a hidden-ish area with a summonable character and a locked gate. On trying to get out of there I fell on top of a big snake enemy and got rekt. I then spent another session clearing out the high section of the village--which I'd managed to miss completely before--and traversing the secret route to the clinic; that poison lake can totally get fucked like. I then went to the Lecture Building which was very tensely creepy and it was bedtime when I hit the Nightmare Frontier area it leads to. Nightmare Frontier looks hella sketchy and I'm looking forward to getting back into it, though I expect to die quickly and a lot and end up returning back to finish the forest.

As an amusing sidebar, at one point I fell off a ledge in the forest and seemed to slide gracefully to the ground; whereupon I lodged neatly behind a tree. I eventually found a way to dislodge my character but the instant my feet touched solid ground all the fall damage I should've taken earlier caught up with me in one fell swoop and I died to shit.

And in your other news, the Rifle Spear is awesome as a secondary weapon. It's two-handed charged move sees your guy run forward for what seems like miles before stabbing the shit out of an enemy which turns some difficult encounters trivial as long as you've got the room to move. The downside is that when you do this massive run up with dramatic stab and your target just sidesteps it you look like a total tit.

Poison lakes are a staple of the souls series. Just be grateful that ones so small.

And I suck with the rifle spear. So very much.

I probably wouldn't use it for anything except the scenario I described, but you almost always can start the move from outside the range that would have an enemy properly come at you so you get basically a free massively damaging hit. And if you back off quickly enough you can just keep doing it, though it does require the enemy to be relatively slow moving; anything that'll sprint towards you after the initial hit means you need to switch back to something quicker.

I've seen videos of people with the rifle spear who can make it look godlike in its awesomeness.

I am not one of them.

Rifle-spear was my secondary weapon during my first playthrough. I did enjoy unleashing hidden buckshot into unsuspecting faces then following it up with the pointy end.

A list of poison lake goodness!

Dark Souls 3 first best posion lake, Bloodborne second best, Dark Souls 2 next, Dark Souls least favourite but one and Demon’s Souls least fave or last bestest.

Where you had to light the fires?

Fuck that.

Spent a few hours on Saturday afternoon grinding my way through Nightmare Frontier. Man, fuck that entire area. Poison lakes, boulder hurling enemies that one shot you, that brain looking enemy that frenzy you and have a near one shot grab attack as well; it's like the perfect storm of hateful nonsense. I've unlocked the final shortcut there though so it'll be a straight run the boss whenever I get back to it.

And it's an optional area!

Arr. All you get from it is the satisfaction of a job well done and some chalice dungeons. {and whatever chunks/runes/echoes you pick up along the way)

Trivia: Nightmare Frontier contains a staple of the Soulsborne series a chap called Patches. He’s my fave character from DS1 & DS3 too.

He's a prick.

He looks just like you. The bloodborne version in particular.

Progress! Finished the Nightmare Frontier including the boss; who's a total dick. In fact I'd go as far as saying Amygdala's the hardest boss in the game thus far, if only because opportunities to actually hit him are so few. Avoiding his attacks is pretty easy but his head is so rarely low enough to hit that the fight just stretches on for fucking ages, and every failed attempt is a double kick in the balls because of how time consuming it all is.

I then went back and smashed through the rest of Forbidden Woods which wasn't all that difficult. Also, the Shadows boss was hilariously easy if you summon the helper NPC. I mean, without the distraction he provides, juggling the three of them would almost certainly be utterly nightmarish but with him running around I found it easier than some of the hunter encounters throughout the game. Indeed I then went on to rattle through Byrgenwerth (which isn't very big or difficult I realise) but stopped for the night after getting murdered a couple of times by the hunter there. That weird grabby weapon she's got is hellish, and there's just so little room to maneouver. I'll get her next time though, and then onto Rom.

Just be grateful you don't have to fight defiled amygdala. You'd probably explode.

He has 8 legs in Bloodborne!

Quite.

Boring rambling updates!

So I eventually did Rom a while back after quite a lot of attempts. She's a piece of piss once you get rid of all the smaller spiders, but doing that's just so time-consuming that I kept getting bored and trying to focus on her while there was still loads of defender around (and thus getting fucked). Once I knuckled down and just took the time it wasn't too hard.

The entirety of Yahar'Gul can fuck the absolute fuck right the fucking fuck off purely because of the respawning enemies. The fun, to me, of Bloodborne is being able to carefully and tactically clear an area out. Yahar'Gul pisses all over that because there's no point taking out other enemies until you find/murder the Chime Maiden; and doing that just aggros everyone for miles around so I end up stressed out and miserable. I've literally ended up just sprinting through the entire thing and avoiding great swathes of it. I sprinted all the way to The One Reborn and have now unlocked the shortcut to him so hopefully I'll be saying goodbye to the entire fucking area soon. The setup of it's brought me pretty close to giving up on the whole game actually and I hope there are no particularly important collectibles around the place because I'm not going back through it.

I also had a go at Upper Cathedral Ward and I think I might be underlevelled or something because I'm getting utterly, utterly ruined by the brain-sucking cunts. The wolves are easy, if very boring to fight, because they can't get through any doors so you just stand on the other side murdering them. The brain suckers though move incredibly quickly and are utterly lethal and there's loads of them, so I've fucked it off entirely.

The brain suckers are super blunt resistant, so make sure you're using an edged weapon. If you can, make it one that sets them on fire.

Currently I have saw cleaver, rifle spear and tonitrus. The rifle spear's too slow for them though so I've just been smacking them with the saw cleaver.

I need to level up my tonitrus anyway though so I might go back with that once it's as high as my other weapons.

For the upper cathedral ward, I suggest blue elixir. Makes sneaking up to and bumming the brain suckers much easier.

I the tonitrus, but whole it tears through most enemies quite effectively, it doesn't work too well on some. Notably the brain suckers.

Ludwig's Holy Blade FTMFW

Prefer the whirligig saw. Buzz buzz fun.

I could never get enough of SWORD! SWORD! MOAR SWORD!

Circular chainsaw....
it cuts things.

I regret deciding on the Kirkhammer as while the sword part was excellently fast but not powerful enough, I barely used the hammer part as it was so slow.

And I'm out. The Nightmare Menses with it's 'constant frenzying' nonsense was just too much after the respawning enemies of the previous level; I'm no longer enjoying it so it gets deleted. It was 'free' so I certainly got my money's worth, even if the final tally was probably about 50/50 between brilliant exploration and genuinely enjoyable combat vs ridiculous masochistic bullshit.

Hilarious, but one question: did you ever call in friendly help to assist you with a level?

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Just ring the sodding bell and someone will turn up as you’re progressing through the level.

No thanks.

Whatever.

The trick to the Nightmare of Mensis (the first part at least) is that the frenzying is coming from only one place, and is line of sight.

I do realise that, it just massively constrains your combat against what are pretty hard enemies in the shape of the electric worm carrying silver beasts. Then it's one shot rock chucking dicks. Then it's loads of spiders. Then it's a Hunter that fucked me up over and over and over again. The cumulative effect of all that just led to me not enjoying it. And I play games to have fun so...

Hide behind stuff then hit things.

Use fire weapons and you don't get worms.

I ran past the silver beasts, spiders and the hunter. The next lamp isn't far.

Use a shield.

Go prone.

Nobody? 'Nightmare Menses'? 'Constant Frenzy?'

Don't do a Mali.

Oh spelling! Right, menstrual stuff.

I'd have to invoice him.

So on a more interesting note than how much of a twat I apparently am, is there ever any explanation given for why many of the human enemies curse you as a beast with their final breath? I genuinely thought that there'd be some kind of revelation, probably Insight related, that you were actually some kind of beast and not human as you thought. I've read loads of lore though and saw all the parts of the game that I didn't personally experience and nothing seems to have explained that?

They're mistaken. They've just become beastly themselves.